Gimme Things That Don't Last Long
by Insomniac Owl
Summary: The aliens are all in Gary's head.


**Gimme Things That Don't Last Long**

_By Insomniac Owl_

* * *

The blue on Gary's hands has the consistency of squeezy chocolate syrup, and there are plastic skull bits scattered across the floor tiles when the door swings open. Gary barely notices. He's just killed a robot in the loo of a pub named after a duel no one remembers anymore and there's a bit of what really looks like hair stuck to one of his shoes.

"Jesus fuck," he whispers. He thinks he might be crying. There's something wet on his face, but that could be blood. "What - um... "

The others have bunched in near the doorway, shuffling around as they try not to get any closer. "Oh my god," Peter says, and then Andy pushes past him, Gary's cell phone brandished in one fist.

"This kid just attacked me," Gary tells him, eyes wide. The robot twitches in his arms, but half its head is missing. It is definitely dead. "Look at this."

"Stop trying to change the subject," Andy snaps. "You know who just rang? Your mother. And not from the afterlife – from fucking Birmingham."

It's a little like when he was sixteen and his father decided they'd both be happier if he just pretended he didn't have a son. Andy looks furious, and the rest of them wear expressions on a sliding scale of horror and pity, but they're all ignoring the important part of what's in front of them.

"I know, I know," Gary says. "She's not really dead. But look at this." The robot twitches again. But this time it's not a weak residual electricity sort of twitch; it looks conscious, one arm jerking up toward his face. "Fuck!" He drops it with a high yell, then leaps to his feet and begins a manic string-puppet dance around the loo, trying to avoid the flailing arms. "Somebody fucking step on it!"

"What the –"

"Gary, calm down."

"Gary!" Andy barks. Gary freezes. Andy hasn't been that loud since he was twenty and Gary was twenty-one and Andy was screaming in his ear, face fading in and out of blackness as Gary blinked at him from the floor of his shitty apartment. It's not much, but it's mine, Andy said, and Gary had promptly made himself at home on the couch, then knocked over a pile of textbooks swinging his feet up onto the beer-ringed coffee table.

"Gary," Stephen says. He's kneeling, voice low and gentle in the sudden stillness. "What do you see?"

Gary swivels his head to look at him. One arm is raised awkwardly out at waist level; he drops both against his thighs, shakes his head. "What do you mean what do I see? It's right there, look for yourself!"

"I see it. Now I want to know what you see."

"Well fuck if I know. I'm pretty sure it's a robot. Or an alien. I mean, it looks human, but look at its head, and it's blood is fucking blue - you can't tell me that's normal."

"Oh for - no. No." Andy turns round toward the door, hands on his hips. His shoulders have gone all tight, and Gary can't see his face but he doesn't like the way he's standing, all rigid and hunched in. He doesn't believe him. But it has to be either a robot or an alien. It has to be - the blood is blue.

"Andy." Stephen closes his eyes. "We're supposed to present a caring but firm -"

"Oh don't you quote that book at me. I read it twenty times my third year of uni and I'm not doing this again so you can piss off. You lot deal with him."

The out of order sign from the last pub knocks against Gary's chest as he straightens. "This is an alien invasion, you twat," he shouts as the door swings shut, "you can't just walk out!"

"What was Andy talking about, just then?" Peter asks.

"I assume it had something to do with Gary's copious drug use at uni. Oh come on," Oliver says, when Peter just stares at him. "You have to have noticed. We didn't see him much but we did see him."

Stephen puts a hand over his face, then pulls his shoulders back a bit. He's handling this remarkably well, Gary thinks, considering how much he's had to drink. "Oliver," Stephen says, "tell Andy to call 999 while he's out there, would you?"

"Oh, I can do that," Oliver says, reaching up to press his earpiece. It pulses on with a blue flash, jewel-bright and so much like the light that had poured from the robot's mouth that Gary flinches. "Yes, I'd like to report a serious assault." Oliver turns his back. "Serious. What, no - not sexual. Um, do you know the Cross Hands Pub? I'm not sure of the address."

"Should I start CPR till they get here?" Peter asks. "He's all…" He makes an gesture with his hands that could mean either the robot is bloody, or that it's turning into a spider, which actually isn't outside the realm of possibility. Stephen shakes his head.

"I think he's breathing on his own, and anyway there might be spinal damage, the way he hit his head."

"When did you turn into a fucking trauma specialist?" Gary pauses, caught by the word's shape in his mouth. "Specialist. Ooh, that's a fun one to say."

"We had enough drunken accidents when we were kids to cover the basics."

"Yeah but we never had spinal injuries. Unless you count that time Oliver cracked his tailbone, which -"

Oliver's eyes flick up, and he's still on the phone with the 999 dispatcher but he says, anyway: "Let's not talk about that, shall we?"

"Why not? It was fucking hilarious. Do you remember, you had to sit on that little pillow in class, and Derek from Maths said you'd had sex with a man and that was why -"

"Yeah, let's please not talk about that. Hello," he says abruptly, face pulling into the same professional mask he wore when Gary found him showing the house. "Yes, still here."

Gary smiles. It's a little uneven, but he's starting to feel better. Less like his heart is trying to claw its way up his throat.

Stephen shuffles a bit closer on his heels. "Gary, listen, I think -"

"Would you stop saying my name? S'creepy."

"I think you're having a breakdown."

"I am not having a breakdown," Gary says. "But if I was, it'd be perfectly understandable since our town is evidently being overrun by robots."

Stephen draw a deep breath in through his nose, presses his hands down against the tiles. It looks like a yoga position.

"Have you taken up yoga, too? Because of what's-her-face?"

"What? No. Listen, Gary, I know what you think you see, but it's not real, alright?"

"I'm going to wait outside for the ambulance," Oliver says, one hand bent over his bluetooth. "It shouldn't be long." There's a bit of blood on the door, Gary notices when Oliver puts out a hand to push it open. There's blood a lot of places it shouldn't be.

"Yeah, fine." Stephen glances over his shoulder, then back at Gary. He looks very sober, now. "Gary."

"I told you, stop saying my name."

"Okay, but you -"

"Shit, shit, everyone back in." Andy says, herding Oliver in front of him as he barrels through the door. There's a slightly panicked look in his eye that Gary recognizes.

"What for?" Stephen's still crouched on the floor, and Gary sidles quickly out of view between the urinals. There's a floppy feeling in his tummy he doesn't care for at all.

"It's the police," Andy tells them.

"Well of course it's the police," Oliver says. "I just called them a few minutes ago. Well, I actually asked for an ambulance, but." He shrugs.

"You what? What for?"

Oliver raises an eyebrow, and when he speaks his voice is flat and even. "Andy, Gary just beat a man half to death in a public toilet."

"He's fine. Look at him. He'll be up and about in no time." Gary actually seriously doubts that, robot or alien or not - he did a good job, damn it - but Andy's grabbed his arm and is dragging him toward the window. "Stephen," Andy says.

"But -"

"Go." And there's nothing for it when he sounds like that, so Stephen goes and then Oliver, then Peter. Peter's never been very agile, and squirms out with difficulty, losing a loafer in the process. Gary pockets it. It'll make a good trick for after they've stopped running.

"Come on," Andy says. "Come on."

"Yeah, just - gimme a boost." He reaches for Andy's shoulder as Andy kneels, bringing his hands up with his fingers laced together.

"You better not have any dog shit on your boots."

Gary grins. "Only a bit. No I'm joking, I'm joking, come on." When Andy stands it's like balancing on a seesaw when a fat kid sits on the other end; he nearly falls, but catches himself on the windowsill with one pinwheeling arm. "Jesus!"

"Just go!" Andy yells, and then Gary's scraping a long strip of skin from his hip on the way out because Andy's pushed him up so hard. He lands in a neatly trimmed hedge, hands out to catch and cut themselves on the neatly trimmed branches.

"Aw, for fuck's sake, ow. Ow."

"Give me a hand," Andy calls from inside. Gary gives himself a second to clench his hands against the pain, then scrambles up. The fence is far enough away from the building that he has to brace himself against the wall, then hang an arm in for Andy to grab, but he does it, and then Andy's up. He isn't through, though. Andy's always been on the pudgy side, and it's not a big window.

"Come on you fat cunt." He gets Andy's wrists in both hands, leans back. But Andy's gone stiff. His eyes are wide.

"Gary. Gary, it's the police."

Gary can't hear what they're saying, but he can hear the voices, raised and calm in the hallway, and then he watches, frozen, as two uniformed men come through the bathroom door. He looks at his hands, gripping Andy by the wrists and the edges of his jacket, skin sweaty and warm even in the chilly late summer air.

He's going to let go.

He looks back to Andy, mouth opening against an apology.

"Don't you fucking dare," Andy hisses. "Gary, I swear to God –"

Only he doesn't get any further than that, because Gary sets one heel into the wall and one into the fence and pulls, hard as he can. A button snaps off against the frame and there's an elbow in his stomach that knocks the wind out of him as Andy topples from the window; they land in a heap in the bush with the sharp twiggy branches and Andy mostly on top of him. Andy rolls off, then hauls Gary up by the back of his shirt, down along the fence to the side gate. Stephen waves at them from the other side of the square. It's gotten dark, and it's actually hard to see him, but that means when he and Andy sprint across, there's less chance of anyone noticing.

"Does anyone remember the way back to the car?" Stephen asks, when they've thrown their backs against the wall beside him.

"Eastchapel Road," Andy says, " a couple of blocks from the First Post. We can be there in five minutes."

"Oh it's 'we' now, is it? Gary's the one who beat the bloke half to death," Oliver says. "Christ, why am I even - " He turns halfway round, huffing a quick breath out his nose. There are two police cars parked outside the pub, lights going, and they casts weird shadows over their faces. The blue light gives Gary a moment of slipping black panic before he remembers they're some distance from the loo. They're safe out here, at least from the robots.

"Come on, let's just go," he says. He shifts his weight, then starts bouncing from foot to foot. The adrenaline's still high in his veins, and he wants to run. "Come on."

So they run, and it feels like he's seventeen again, fleeing shop owners or teachers or his father with the belt he wore until he died, blood singing in his ears. Five blocks later he's throwing himself across the Beast's hood, keys in hand. He slides easily along the metal, the smooth new paint. It had never been this easy when he was a teenager. "I'm driving!" he calls, laughing. It's a high, manic sound that he likes.

"Like hell you are. Give me those." Andy wrests the keys from his fingers, shoos him over to the other side of the car.

They peel out of the parking lot so fast the tires squeal, and Peter leans to peer out the window, scanning for police. There's no one on the road, though, and after a mile or so he leans back again. The car settles into the quiet rush of passing trees and countryside, the rough hum of tires on asphalt. Oliver falls asleep with his mouth open. Gary remembers the shoe in his pocket, and lobs it out the window when no one's looking.

Now Leaving Newton Haven. Please drive safely!

"Still worried 'bout those aliens?" Andy asks, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. In their escape it had gotten knocked askew; Gary reaches to straighten it.

"What?"

"You said the kid back there was an alien. Or a robot. One or the other."

"Oh."

The adrenaline has gone cool in his veins, leaving him sprawled loose-limbed in the passenger seat and across the center armrest. His knee is so close to the gear shift that the back of Andy's hand knocks into it whenever he changes gears.

A robot, he thinks. It was a robot. It's blood was blue.

But in the calm darkness of the car, a very different picture surfaces. Everything is red. There's a boy in a hoodie on the loo floor, spreadeagled and broken-nosed, and when Gary remembers how hard he threw him against the urinal he winces. So hard his head broke open like an eggshell, all jagged edges and plastic, something in him murmurs. He lunges for the thought, but there's blood on his hands and he can't hold on long enough to make it true.

Red. It was red.

Oh, oh –

"Andy." His voice is a ragged whisper. He wouldn't have tolerated that an hour ago, but now he can't bring himself to care. An hour ago he hadn't cracked a man's skull open against a urinal. "Andy there's blood on my hands."

"Yeah, mate. I know."

His face is dark and smooth in profile, but every time they pass a street lamp, yellow light flashes in through the window, and Gary can see the lines and the old scars and how old Andy looks, just then. Andy is thirty nine and Gary's forty and there's blood on his hands in the dark confines of the car.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"I know."

"I mean - for leaving you in the car that night. That you got arrested." For doing this to you, he wants to say, but can't. He swallows the words down and shuts his lips over them, ducks his head to keep them in.

"Oh."

Andy reaches for the gear shift, bringing them down into third, and his hand bumps against Gary's knee. The road is empty; there's nothing to slow down for. But he gives Gary's knee an absent little pat. "It'll be okay," he says. Gary puts a hand to his throat, where the words are caught. They're still there but he thinks, maybe, that Andy heard them anyway. He's not convinced things will be okay, but they're out of Newton Haven, so that's something. And that police officer still thinks he's Peter.

"Hey Andy?"

"Yeah mate."

"You know you're the best friend I've ever had, right?"

Andy cuts him a look across the armrest. "Christ, I don't remember you being so maudlin when you're drunk. Go to to sleep. I'll wake you when we're home."

"You don't even know where I live."

"I do."

"Do not."

"I asked your mum just now."

"You better not have. Cunt. She'll think I'm completely smashed."

"Aren't you?" It's dark, but Gary thinks he's smiling at him. It looks fond, so he smiles back. "Go to sleep," Andy says.

"Fuck off," Gary murmurs, but he sets his shoulder against the door, leans his head against the window. Andy starts humming something under his breath, dark and deep and slow, and Gary, recognizing it, smiles.

"Knew you liked Sisters of Mercy."

Andy keeps humming. "Only because you did." The car is quiet and the road dark behind them, and Gary can hear the smile in his voice. He closes his eyes, lays his hand over Andy's on his knee. It's a long drive back to London, and he really is tired.

* * *

Note: The song Andy's humming is The Sisters of Mercy's 'Amphetamine Logic'.


End file.
